Dear John!
I liked your essay. It inevitably conveys essential well-formed thoughts which regard and can attract the interest of a broader audience. Your longer comments also are sympathetic for me, due to those also informatively express your wide-scale interest, knowledge and wisdom inside.
I welcome too, your mentioning the top-down bottom up 'logic', due to it is vital to understand also for the complexity of energy/information transfer in an organism either realized and may be controlled voluntary, consciously or operating only behind naturally balanced.
(Because I'm an IT expert therefore, this topdown problem much times turns up. When I was a young student in the University I had a heavy debate with my programmer teacher and I questioned: - How should be one able to sketch a plan of a program structurally well organized from top if he has nothing information which kind of basic elements are at his disposal from which he needs then build/write a concrete program? He answered me, that is not necessary to know when planning. I couldn't then agree, so I got fail '1'. Now, I can partially agree theoretically, due to a discretion of my insufficient information given in my question. I did not put there that clause - ... if I were the planner and the programmer in one.) I think, my teacher was partially right in his theoretical statement, and I failed my question. However I think, the fact remains that much problems are raised by this theoretical truth making which have been waving yet in the religious, political, scientific systems for governing successful group organizations. Surely, there need to be stratum of knowledge which ones should have to have to do their works at their proper places, not only for their self-interest but for a broader scale of goods and those works are can be structurally shared even so being been co-working. I think, a planner or leader need to know as much about the bottom up working of the system as how one be able to make a successful guiding plan from top to bottom. Otherwise one can plan system/systems which should work only from top to bottom governed albeit worked out by well-thought out planning systems somehow independent from or completely subordinating the bottom, so probably never fulfilling both can be balanced.
You also mentioned my favourite viewpoint written in my essay pointing a comparison between a societal organization and a biological working of a human body.
I think, this similitude as a Universal model is vital finally (or as a renewed starting point)to recognize, however that is also very essential to apprehend and re-consider: - What are our cells pays to each other for their co-working to keep a whole organism healthy? What if when a group of cells or some individual cells not in their right place try to gain dominion over a whole complex?
At the moment albeit we should be at the start line to recognize the UNIVERSAL model, however until we do not apprehend that too, it is not a right goal (at least beyond reason to achieve ) to overcome ourselves! That is beyond reason to overcome a Universally and unconditionally given well-working, self-sustaining NATURE.
All what any religious message could convey - The LIFE, THE EXISTENCE IS UNCONDITIONALLY GIVEN AND IMMORTAL! NOT ONLY THE SPIRITUAL BEINGNESS, THE FORMLESS SELF IS IMMORTAL, BUT THE WELL BALANCED NATURAL PHYSICALLY ARRANGED NATURE from its bottom to top IS IMMORTAL! At which apex can be the UNIVERSAL NATURALLY ORGANISED MAN, who is able to recognize, apprehend himself, and can keep governed his existence from top to bottom well balanced! IT NEED NOT TO BE PROVED only EXPERIENCED!
The questions are not WHO is or WHO are the GODs! Whether he/she has male or female characteristic. Some religious interpretations really can be outdated and sometimes seriously goal oriented. But the real message behind unequivocal for every one of us!
As Aristotle ever said, and I can agree - THE GOD is - the self-thinking thoughts what ability is inherently and also unconditionally given for the MAN!
The utmost WISE one needs only to know - WHAT HE/SHE DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW and WHY!
So, I agree, and liked! "...So if God is in charge, she apparently dosnċ
µt want to know everything..."
I agree with you also the essential statements you exert such as are:
"..Information is dynamically complex and complexity tends to become unstable beyond a certain level.."
"..We frequently build out levels of complexity and then struggle to maintain them and manage their consequences..."
However, I should be in disagreement with you some of your statements or at least the deduction you made, concerning the 'Absolute', 'Void has no form' and
'We are fundamentally linear creatures.'
"..So knowledge is a function of the detail .." I think, depending on how one conceptualize the details. But, in that meaning the Absolute - as the unconditional existence itself - doesn't depends on the details those (I agree) '..lost for the absolute.."
"..The void has no form. Sorry Plato.."
I have some questions for you to test and answer for yourself:
Can you think on - nothing, no think, no thing, no signal, no noise - in the meantime you are inhabiting a form of your physical body? Try it! What can you sense, see when you contemplate the void? What does this experience mean for you?
"..We are fundamentally linear creatures.." "..we are linear, object oriented thinkers, .."
We are fundamentally NOT a linear creatures! Just you wrote much about the time flowing back and forth from past to future and backward too, and how " ..individual organisms die and pass on their genetic code.."
Our present consciousness is conditioned to think that or so! I tried to give some mentioning in my essay - independently from our absolute existence -
We are fundamentally not living in time! Our present consciousness however need to some pre / post processing not to act and react just-in time. However how much it can be artificially delayed and over loaded our natural electric body circuits or that can be substituted with some kind of else basic material... s it in question yet, I think running by some kind of experiments?
"...while the larger reality is one of balance and process.." to understand where is the optimal boundary for us to know, what and why, and how to use it well. I hope at least, this is so, truly. :)
Best of all,
Valeria